Since the beginning of my practice I have been using traditional "talk therapy" techniques to help clients make positive changes in their lives. When the National Institutes of Health recognized hypnosis as an intervention, I added it to my practice after training for two years at the Wellness Institute in Issaquah, Washington. The combination of the two methodologies when applied under appropriate circumstances has been remarkably successful.

In traditional talk therapy, my clients and I analyze the narrative, trying to get to the reasons for the behavior being examined. Our conclusions provide clients with helpful explanations as to why they behave as they do. There can be immense emotional relief but the changes desired take place intellectually.

In hypnotherapy, I use hypnosis - the trance state or twilight sleep between waking and sleeping - to guide the client to the source of his or her "feelings." The emotional "charge" that drives us to behave in a particular way is tapped. Traumatic events are "relived" because the subconscious doesn't know the difference between then and now. Old, long repressed feelings are released, making room for new ways of experiencing ourselves. We literally change the narrative from a negative story to a positive one. Because the client is in a trance state, his or her subconscious mind is more readily accessible and it is this part of the mind that allows us to get to our feelings, memories, and spiritual center.

In talk therapy, the therapist is a screen on which the client projects feelings and attitudes. In hypnotherapy the therapist is a guide, helping the client actually recreate the feelings present at the time when the behavior being examined originated. The goals are the same: to move the client to a better understanding of the Self.

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